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Rihanna has opened up to Elle about her fans' response to her reconnecting with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown despite his conviction for assaulting her back in 2009. "It's very hard for me to accept, but I get it," she told the fashion magazine. "People end up wasting their time on the blogs or whatever, ranting away, and that's all right. I don't hate them for it." She says she is unwilling to apologize for her decision because "tomorrow I'm still going to be the same person. I'm still going to do what I want to do."

The singer says her experience following Brown's attack before the Grammys three years ago was essential to making her the woman she is today. "It gave me guns," she says of the incident. "I was like, well, fuck. They know more about me than I want them to know. It's embarrassing. But that was my opening. That was my liberation, my moment of 'bring it.' I wanted people to know who I am. Whatever they take that to be, good or bad, I just want them to know the truth.

"I have more freedom the more people know about me," says Rihanna. "It's like, one less skeleton in the closet, one less burden, one less secret; now you know that, so you can say what you want about it. I don't have anything to hide."